The original Rogue still holds up as a great game. I've played the DOSBox version and found it to be not quite as deep as Nethack, but more fun overall.
In nethack it's easy to just grind until you're invincible (barring YASD/"yet another stupid death", a death usually brought on by inattention rather than bad strategy or tactics) and then the endgame is a cake walk.
In Brogue (at least at the skill level I'm at), dashing through the last few levels to the amulet using up a lot of resources to survive and escape is very common.
